After receiving word of a meeting with the coordinator today at half 8, I was initially thinking he wanted to meet up with folks (like me) who were having problems. It was also nearing time to assign supervisors for individual dissertations. However, half an hour beforehand, he e-mailed me saying HE would like to supervise me! But, only “if I had no further plans”. As if! So thankfully my dissertation is “good to go” and has a supervisor who is the head of the course. So good news for a change! Though the class meeting seemed a little unnecessary (the other two girls in my “micro-group” had no supervisors and were still in proposal phase, so I felt a little like a prat when I mentioned I had a supervisor, and who it was!)

OK it may not apply to me but a rather strongly worded e-mail summarizes my feelings when I looked at it today. Since I haven’t been given the “all clear”, it is rather worrying.

“Fellow Scholars,

I have had thesis proposals from most people in the class, and I will meet many of you tomorrow night. However, if you did not get in touch with me and did not send me a proposal, the opportunity for submitting a thesis in September 2010 is rapidly fading.”

OK so I am slightly less worried because I am on the meeting list, and have sent revised proposals, but still! 😐

That Trinity Ball utterly destroyed me and any chance of sending that proposal by Sunday like I promised. However, I got my sister and dad to help me construct a revised proposal. Sent it today with an apology for the lateness! Now to wait anxiously for feedback.

So I had a meeting with my course coordinator to try and improve my initial proposal. I had sent a “proto-proposal” and a draft proposal, which were riddled with problems. “Woolly” unclear and “very confused” was how my coordinator described it.

So my coordinator was kind enough to give me some of his time (it ended up being nearly an hour of it) to try and sort out this mess. Needless to say, I was in bad form going in, and I’m sure this was obvious. We got straight into the idea, and he wanted me to first “talk him through” it.

Oh yeah, the idea! I want to examine how the stories during the crisis Budgets of 1987 and 2009 in Ireland were “framed” by the Irish print media. Framing theory (and it’s offshoot, agenda-setting) are well documented theories about how stories are arranged in order of importance. I want to examine if the media arranged their stories to reflect the Budget crises, or whether the Editor determined the “agenda” of the paper.

My coordinator seemed satisfied with my idea once I spoke to him about it, but he said I really need to work on writing it down clearly. For a proposal of 1,500 words (roughly) every sentence is important. Naturally this is something I failed utterly to realize. He ended the meeting by asking for a new draft proposal as soon as possible. Despite the Trinity Ball looming over me the next day(!) I said I’d have an email for him by hopefully Sunday. He ended the meeting by saying I had “good bones for a good thesis” but I wasn’t convinced, but that’s my problem, not his 😛